Dinner from the night markets to your doorstep, Auckland Night Markets to launch new food delivery service
Auckland Night Markets directors say they founded the business to give Aucklanders an "international street food dining experience". But with a growing number of customers getting used to having their dinners delivered to their doorsteps by the likes of Uber Eats and Panda, the night markets will be launching their own app and delivery service. So instead of queuing for food at the night market stalls, customers can order their dinner from up to 150 night market vendors and have the food delivered. The first night market was opened in 2010 at Pakuranga, but has since expanded to seven locations across Auckland and two in Hamilton on different nights of the week.
Night market co-founder Paul de Jonge said the need to launch a food delivery service and Night Market Eats mobile application was "a sign of the times". "Aucklanders are today so used to having the convenience of just pushing the screens of their mobile phones and having their dinner appear on their doorsteps," de Jonge said. "One of the top queries we get is about whether we do deliveries, so we've just got to keep up with it." The service is offered without charge to night market stall holders, de Jonge said, and is also a way to help them grow their business. The range of food on offer at the night markets include squid tentacles, durian pastry, dumplings, hangi, fried noodles, burgers and barbecue skewers. Cuisines range from Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Greek, Hungarian, Maori to Pasifika. "We are looking at how we can best ensure that the food remains fresh and gets delivered to our customers at the quickest possible time," de Jonge said. Jasmine Yao, 28, who developed the mobile app, said customers can order from any number of stalls and pay just one delivery fee. The food is sent to a centralised pick-up point, or the "night market hub", and the delivery driver will pick up and take it to the customer's doorstep. Customers will be able to find the list of stall operators and menus on any given night in the mobile app. "We basically make our money from the rent, so we won't charge our stallholders any more commission on top of what they sell their food for," Yao said. "This is also a way to help us attract even more stallholders in the future."
The app and delivery service will be trialled in late September, early October, Yao said. Information on how to download the app will be released on the Auckland Night Markets Facebook page once it's ready. A frequent user of Uber Eats food delivery service and night market visitor Tom Gibbard, 24, said he was excited about the night market delivery but questioned whether it would work in terms of food quality. "We're not talking pizza or fried chicken here, noodles can get soggy and some Asian buns can become hard as stone when left out for a while," Gibbard said. Another night market regular Dave Takai, 42, said he was unlikely to use the delivery service and would continue to get his dinners at the markets. "The night market isn't just about the food, it's the atmosphere. You can have pizza at home, but you've got to be at the markets to fully enjoy what the food's about.
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Poll: Should drivers retake the theory test every 10 years?
Drivers get where they need to go, but sometimes it seems that we are all abiding by different road rules (for example, the varying ways drivers indicate around a roundabout).
Do you think drivers should be required to take a quick driving theory test every 10 years?
Vote in the poll and share any road rules that you've seen bent! 😱
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49.5% Yes
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48.6% No
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1.9% Other - I'll share below
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I am lighter than air, but a hundred people cannot lift me. What am I?
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Why make picking up reserved library books harder? What do you think? Challenge: Write the last stanza for the first poem attached below.
Once books are reserved in Auckland Libraries books, when they are available no longer go alphabetically by customer but instead go into a Holds pickup shelf number based presumably somehow on when each book needs to be picked up by.
I had two books reserved that arrived on two different days in the Blockhouse Bay Library and hence each book has a different shelf number. Hard to find unless you knew the shelf number in the notification email. Even if you knew the shelf number I found myself three books by the same author on the two shelf numbers.
More recently yesterday a book I reserved was on a different shelf number than was specified in my notification email (see image below).
Sadly it is clear from library staff that a numerical system for reserves is here to stay.
I suggest that so that all books for each person has the same shelf number, the shelf number becomes the last digit of a person's library card (0-9).
Within each shelf number a book is found under the day the reserve arrives in the library (01 to 31, hopefully the same date the email is sent).
Since a customer appears to have 10 days to pick up a book, ten days of the month would appear to be required at any time (for each digit 0-9).
Once there are 10 days used the next day's reserves could go back at the beginning of the shelf number after any remaining books not collected (hopefully none) are removed (along with the old day number and the new day number (01 to 31) inserted) after the last day available and future days' books remaining moved forward to make room.
Each day number (01-31) would appear once for each shelf number (0-9) before the first book on that day- perhaps cover an old withdrawn book with paper with each day number on the spine?
When a reserved book arrives in the library the last digit of the library card could be placed on a piece of paper in the book to be removed when it is put on the shelf, to be recycled the next day.
What do you think?
See the image below and page 3 below for a letter appearing in the Western Leader on 9 September:
www.neighbourly.co.nz...
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